Limb perfusion is a medical technique that is used to deliver drugs locally directly to a site of interest.
It is also used in veterinary medicine to deliver drugs to a site of infection or injury, as well as for the treatment of cancer in dogs.
The main purpose of the isolated limb perfusion technique is to deliver a very high dose of chemotherapy, at elevated temperature, to tumour sites without causing overwhelming systemic damage.
Blood flow through the limb is typically achieved using an extracorporeal circuit consisting of cannulae, tubing, peristaltic roller pump, heat exchanger, and pressure monitoring/safety devices.
Among other types of cancer, isolated limb perfusion has been used to treat in transit metastatic melanoma.
[1] In the early 1990s an alternative technique was developed at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, Australia: isolated limb infusion.
Because of the size of the limbs, RLP is not possible above the elbow or stifle of a horse because of inadequate compression of the underlying blood vessels.
[11] In the case of lameness in horses, local use of regenerative therapies, such as stem cells,[12] or bisphosphonates such as tiludronic acid[13] are also given by RLP.